


The Revolution In My Bedroom

by justhush (fragilehuge)



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:59:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6232483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragilehuge/pseuds/justhush
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes goes boxing that night, and it’s the same as usual except for one thing: he loses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Revolution In My Bedroom

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2011.
> 
> Original author's notes:
> 
> Beta'd by jacknjill270 . I think I started this for hc_bingo, but I can't remember anymore. Title & cut text from Hurricane by Panic! at the Disco.

Holmes goes boxing that night, and it’s the same as usual except for one thing: he loses. Watson isn’t sure what’s more damaged—Holmes’ face or his pride. Not that Holmes would admit that either was stinging.

“Stop—moving,” Watson says between clenched teeth, in the middle of putting two stitches into the gash above Holmes’ eyebrow. It probably doesn’t truly need stitches, but he'd already put four stitches into the nasty wound on Holmes' shoulder, and it wasn't much more trouble to fix his face as well. In any case, the cut will heal more cleanly that way, and Watson can never stand to see Holmes hurt.

Silently, Watson inspects Holmes’ black eye.

“Your ribs?” he asks, and for all that Watson is looking at Holmes’ eyes, he isn’t looking _into_ them. He doesn’t think he can manage to make eye contact when he is this close to Holmes’ face. _It is likely,_ he thinks, _that I would be unable to stop myself from doing something ill-advised._

“Fine. Bruised but not broken, I think.”

Watson presses his fingers lightly into Holmes’ ribcage, feeling for himself. They aren’t broken, thank god, he can tell that immediately. Watson lingers a moment longer, feeling the planes of Holmes’ muscles.

“Let me see your knuckles,” Watson says, suddenly, even though he’s seen them already. Holmes obliges him, and Watson touches each of Holmes’ fingers, the sinewy muscles there. He swabs a bit of alcohol over the abrasions, and Holmes jerks slightly.

“Hurts?” Watson asks, unable to keep from smiling.

Holmes, to his credit, only looks slightly ruffled by Watson’s teasing. “Cold, is all. Startled me.”

“I’m surprised you can be surprised,” Watson murmurs. He’s so close to Holmes, though. Close enough that Holmes will be able to hear him more than clearly. Watson knows his voice is altogether too soft, too intimate for the situation. But this is _Holmes_.

“It’s an effect you have on me,” Holmes says, equally soft, and Watson looks into Holmes’ eyes despite himself. It’s as bad an idea as he’d previously believed, and Watson has to look away. His gaze flicks back to Holmes’ mouth—this close, he can see every detail: the redness of his bottom lip, the fact that they’re slightly chapped, the puffy place where Holmes must have been punched, earlier.

So Watson kisses him.

It isn’t, really, a particularly good kiss. The moment his lips touch Holmes’, he absolutely and utterly panics. His entire body seizes up, his heart hammering like it's trying to break free of its prison. It barely takes a second for Watson’s mind to start screaming, _This is sodomy. This cannot cannot_ cannot— He’s still caught on the litany of cannots when he tries to push Holmes away.

He doesn’t get very far. Holmes grapples at Watson’s back with all his strength as a boxer, and Watson knows— _knows_ from the wiry determination of Holmes’ body that this is a fight he will not lose.

That’s probably fair. Holmes has already lost one fight tonight.

So Watson stops trying to pull away. He doesn’t move closer to Holmes, though, just stays very still. His mouth still very close to Holmes’. Watson wonders what the other man is trying to accomplish by holding him this close. It’s not like the kiss could have been very pleasurable; their teeth clacked together painfully more than once.

But Holmes does not move. Even as the moment becomes painfully tense, Holmes stays put. He doesn’t move forward—and makes no indication that he will—so Watson tilts his head, enough to make it easier to press forward into Holmes’ mouth. He is still panicking, of course, because Watson does not know how not to be terrified at this moment. He is increasingly aware of his pulse and the way it thrums insistently in his chest and the arteries of his neck, but he continues kissing Holmes, letting his terror feed his hunger, only pulling back once to pant messily against Holmes’ mouth.

Watson feels like he’s dying and more alive than he ever has before. He feels nauseated and terrified but he is more afraid of what will happen when he stops kissing Holmes. The other man’s body is a solid weight against him—Holmes has half-crawled into Watson’s lap, pressed him into the back of his chair—but Watson is shaking so much that Holmes’ weight is unsettling, smothering. And yet Watson cannot bear to imagine what would happen to him without Holmes on top of him. His body is threatening to come apart; it feels like he’ll separate at his every joint without Holmes there to hold him together. There is a part of Watson’s brain that is telling him such a thing is impossible, ludicrous, but he can still feel himself coming apart, like he’s a poorly sewn doll and all the stitches are falling out of his seams.

Then the kiss changes. Watson’s hot all over, and he knows his face must be flushed a blotchy, ugly red, and he is reeling the moment he notices Holmes pulling back.

Watson thinks, _I cannot let him see me like this_. Holmes must not see him so wildly out of control. But Holmes does not stop to look at Watson’s face. He kisses down Watson’s throat to the line of his collar bone, his dry lips oddly chaste. Watson can feel that Holmes is still hard and needing, but as Holmes presses simple kisses to Watson’s chest—through his shirt, for they had not thought or bothered to take it off—Watson feels himself begin to calm.

Holmes removes Watson’s shirt and kisses the scarring on his shoulder, murmurs, “Don’t panic,” and kisses Watson slowly, languidly, like Holmes is a cat and Watson is his cream. It takes a while, but eventually most of the tension eases itself from between Watson’s shoulder blades.

Holmes says, “Damn,” and it’s almost funny how quickly Watson seizes up again, and an idle part of his mind wonders how it is that Holmes has enough power over him that one word can shake him to his very bones.

Holmes says, “I believe we split the stitches on my shoulder at some point.”

They did. There is blood caked down Holmes’ arm, half-dried and sticky. There is blood on both of their shirts, and the chair, and even more on Watson’s hands and arms and chest.

“I’m surprised we didn’t notice,” Watson says.

“I’m not,” says Holmes, and Watson laughs and laughs and laughs.  
-

Watson later supposes that the night was not, in fact, usual at all.

He is reading a book—Holmes is lying on the couch with his head propped up upon Watson’s leg—when the thought hits him. He looks down at Holmes, who is studying their bookkeeping, the ledgers settled upon his belly. Watson stills his hand in Holmes’ hair.

“Hm?” Holmes cranes his head so that he can look up at Watson. “Why are you frowning?”

“You threw the fight.”

“What?” Holmes says, much too innocently, and even though it was months ago, Watson knows Holmes knows exactly which fight he’s referring to.

“Didn’t you?”

Holmes turns back to his bookkeeping very casually, says, “That would’ve been a rather desperate move, don’t you think? Sounds like the sort of thing one would do if they were rather—well, _frustrated,_ in more ways than one. One would not resort to such measures until many months of hinting and coaxing had passed unnoticed.” Holmes taps his chin. “Perhaps if the walls were thin enough such a drastic measure could become very appealing quite quickly.”

Watson blinks. “What do the walls have to do with it?”

Holmes turns to grin lewdly at him. “If the walls were thin enough, one would be able to hear all of the... goings on of his flatmate. Who is, by the way, rather _loud_ when preforming certain acts upon his person.”

Watson feels himself blush all the way to his ears.

“Not that that’s a problem,” Holmes mutters, eyes turned back to the ledgers. “Though I much prefer to listen without the obstruction of walls.”

Watson barely manages to choke out, “Oh, so it’s ‘I’ now, not ‘one’?” He does not quite accomplish the dry tone he was trying for.

Holmes doesn’t comment, though as he writes something in the margins of the ledger he seems rather smug. Watson does not begrudge him that in the slightest. He does, however, entertain a passing and somewhat evil thought about the relative thinness of walls and how loud he thinks he could get, were he not trying to keep quiet.


End file.
